The words Richard and Judy, Watch and exposure spring to mind, when reading this report on BBC children's programming from the BBC Trust. The trust's common sense point is that children behave like adults when it comes to television viewing, despite all the chatter about digital choice and online.

If you reduce the presence of children's programmes on BBC1, young viewers will not necessarily flock across to digital channel CBBC, crafted especially for them. How irritating.

The BBC Trust is asking the corporation's management to address this loss of children's audience during 2009. But the BBC regulatory and governance body has no power to intervene in channel schedules – so we are set for an interesting clash of priorities. Is a mainstream quizshow more important than serving children?

I think, to be constructive, the BBC Trust really ought to ask for a post mortem. How was it that, in defending BBC1's share of adult audiences – after losing Neighbours to Channel Five last year – that children's programmes can be pushed around by the schedulers and channel executives?

This despite the fact that children's television is at the very core of the BBC's public purpose. Can we say the same for The Weakest Link?

It is not that the outcome was unexpected. In 2006 children's programmes were pushed off BBC1 on Saturday mornings in favour of cookery, moving to BBC2. This has resulted in children deserting, and halved audiences for Saturday morning kid's output.

The report, rather deliciously, also administers a poke in the eye to that smug BBC mantra: Fewer, Bigger, Better programmes. Applied to children's television, this has meant kids dramas have halved to seven a year.

Result: children are complaining of too many repeats, they want new episodes of Tracy Beaker, not reheats. I suspect that adult viewers will soon start saying the very same thing as the kids about BBC repeats – a neat bit of role reversal.

The tragedy of children's speech radio, such a neglected infant that it has virtually expired, is also laid bare in the BBC Trust report. There are such appallingly low audiences for strands such as Go 4 It – on Radio 4, after The Archers on Sunday nights – it is clearly going to have to be scrapped. Reinvigoration? I'm not holding my breath.

Finally, after the BBC Trust dashed to ringfence spending on children's programming in late 2007, it is now demanding that all the costs of children's programming is aggregated, to capture first runs on BBC1 and BBC2.

This benchmarking is aimed at preventing money being siphoned off without us noticing. This is canny, since the move of BBC departments – including children's – to Salford is predicted to create a big cash outflow from somewhere.

But my final point is that this report is merely the hors d'oeuvre, and relatively palatable.

However you look at it, the Cbeebies channel is a triumph, while CBBC is soldiering on pretty well in a tougher market niche.

There is a hopeless stab at a teen solution, at weekends, called Switch – the worst name ever. Ofcom has, independently, identified this area as ripe for Channel 4-style solutions – but the BBC must also send its troops in here ASAP.

In truth this cries out for creative leadership and dynamism, producers who understand teenagers: absolutely not corporation bureaucrats.

This youth programming review will also combine with another hot potato: new proposals for online learning. There has been an uncomfortably long delay since the closure of online learning offering BBC Jam two years ago.

My teenage son is a big fan of the BBC's revision service, Bitesize – there is also Learning Zone Broadband – and I am dismayed to see from today's report that commercial rivals are now complaining to the BBC Trust about these services not being distinctive enough.

The BBC Trust must say that the BBC has every right to provide educational programming for children. Perhaps it ought to go back to basics, and revive TV and radio educational schools programmes. No one else will.

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